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Popular Culture Review
blackest eyes . . . the Devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to
reach him. And then another seven years trying to keep him
locked up because I realized that what was living behind that
boy’s eyes was purely and simply evil (Muir 73).
Unlike any ordinary mortal, Michael rises time and time again near the
end of the film, each resurrection providing yet another shock for the audience.
Just when the nightmare seems to be over, Michael comes back again. After
repeated attempts by Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) to do him in, Dr. Loomis
finally shoots him, and Laurie remaiks, “That was the Bogey Man.” Loomis’s
reply: “As a matter of fact, it was” (Halloween).
In his discussion of John Carpenter in Film Comment, Kent Jones points
out that Carpenter is:
. . . one of the few modem artists whose subject is the
contemplation of true evil, or to be more precise, the stance that
people take when they come face to face with true evil. Among
the most tiresome contemporary cliches is “the banality of
evil,” the idea that it exists within all of us and can be sparked
by random events . . For Carpenter, evil is horrifying . . . His
characters . . . recognize it, which is the moment of absolute
horror (Jones 26).
In Halloween's end credits, Michael is referred to as “The Shape.”
Throughout most of the movie, he is seen lurking in the shadows, a faceless being
behind a mask. He is a character representing, not a person, but a symbol, a
primitive concept—the epitome of evil, a universally existing evil. As John Muir
puts it in The Films of John Carpenter, modem wrongdoers are seldom seen as
“evil” by the media or psychology experts:
They are described instead as a ‘product of their environment,’
or as ‘disturbed.’ Motives are attributed, and reasons for the
behavior are documented. . . . Experts look to find some reason,
some clue as to why a child could commit murder. Likewise,
killers who sit on death row . . . are not ‘purely and simply evil’
either. They are instead a result of genetic predispositions to
alcoholism, drug addiction, child abuse, crime. Those who
commit deeds of violence are not denounced as ‘devilish’
entities, but rather as explainable, understandable creatures who
are even pitiable in their own way. Halloween's Michael
Myers is a determinedly different animal. . . .He is the perfect